Brockton High to combat sexual assault with $10K grant

Monday

The Eastern Bank grant will bring IMPACT's College Bound program to Brockton High School.

BROCKTON — Some of the questions and comments from high school students ask can be heartbreaking, Meg Stone says.

I’m doing an internship next year, a teenage girl will say, and there’s sexual assault in offices, right? I’m going to be living on my own next year, another will ask — how do I make sure I’m not harassed and assaulted? Or another common question: What kind of self-defense skills will I need before I start college?

“It’s really disheartening that people have to live this way,” said Stone, the director of the IMPACT program, which provides training to combat sexual assault.

But it’s encouraging, too, she said, that the public is finally giving attention to “epidemic levels” of violence against women, and also that her organization has the means to help give students the skills to combat it.

Brockton High School students will receive that opportunity this year, thanks to a $10,000 targeted grant from Eastern Bank that will bring IMPACT’s College Bound program to the school.

Stone said they hope to begin offering after-school programs for students in the next month, and continue through the spring. IMPACT has worked in about 69 high schools and colleges, including Bridgewater State University.

Its College Bound program helps students learn physical and verbal self-protection skills, strategies to stop sexual assaults, assertive communication, and how to safely help an at-risk friend.

In a statement, Brockton officials Mary Ellen Kirrane (the district’s director of wellness) and Cheryll Leach (wellness educator) said they were “very excited” to offer the program to Brockton High School students.

“Participating in this program will help students gain a greater sense of being self-sufficient and empowered, which is a goal we set for all our students,” they said.

Stone said one of the most important principles of self-defense is that it’s not only physical — it’s verbal and emotional, too.

“We teach students a variety of skills for communicating that a situation is unwanted or unsafe: assertiveness, boundary setting, forceful verbal resistance,” Stone said. “Then, if verbal resistance, fails, you use physical resistance.”

The program comes to Brockton schools during a tidal wave of awareness in the last few years about sexual assault, domestic violence and the #MeToo movement. Two weeks ago, the confirmation hearings of Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh seemed to turn the nation’s entire attention to issues of sexual assault.

Stone said her IMPACT program has seen a 41 percent increase in programming in the last year.

“It’s given great attention — and overdue attention — to epidemic levels of violence that have always existed,” she said. “People are realizing we have to do anything we can to prevent it.”

The $10,000 grant making the program possible at Brockton High School was one of 170 distributed by Eastern Bank this year, according to a press release. The bank focused specifically this year on providing grants to nonprofits that address women’s issues like sexual assault, domestic violence, pay equity and executive representation, among others.